Hexagonal chess

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The term hexagonal chess designates a group of chess variants played on hexagonal boards. The most popular of which is Gliński's hexagonal chess which was invented in 1936 by Władysław Gliński.

Contents 1 Gliński's hexagonal chess 2 McCooey's hexagonal chess 3 Shafran's hexagonal chess 4 Other hexagonal chess variants 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Gliński's hexagonal chess

This is the most popular game of hexagonal chess variants. At one point of time there were more than half-a-million players of this game, and more than 130,000 board sets have been sold.^[1] The game was very popular in Eastern Europe, especially in Poland, Gliński's native country.

The game is played on a hexagonal board with three colors (light, dark and gray), with the middle cell (or hex) usually gray^[2]. The usual set of chess pieces is extended with a bishop and a pawn. Initial setup is shown on the diagram at right. The board has 11 files, marked with letters a, b, c, ..., k, l (letter j is not used) and 11 ranks. Ranks 1-6 have 11 squares. They bend at 120° on file f. The rank 7 (it is filled with black pawns in initial setup) has 9 squares, rank 8 has 7, rank 11 has only one square, f11.

The diagrams below show how the pieces move. As in chess, knight can jump over other pieces. Three bishops on different colors can never meet. Queen moves as rook and bishop. There is no castling in this game.

King	Knight
Bishop	Rook
Queen	Pawn

Pawns move straight forward and capture orthogonally to an adjacent square (shown as red circles on the diagram above); the pawn's capturing move direction does not correspond to the bishop's move, as is the case in square chess. All pawns, except the one in the middle, can make a double step from their starting hexes. If a pawn captures from its starting hex in such a way that it now occupies a starting hex of another pawn, it can still make a double move. For example, if the pawn on e4 would capture a black piece on f5, it still has the option to move to f7. En passant captures are also possible: for example, if the black pawn on c7 on the diagram above moves to c5, the white pawn on b5 can capture it: bxc6. Pawns promote on the last hex of a file; the hexes where white pawns promote are marked with stars.

Stalemate is not a draw in this chess variant, but is still counted less than checkmate. In tournament games, the stalemated player (the one who can't make any legal moves) earns 0.25 points and the player who delivers stalemate 0.75 points.

A numeric (or international) notation exists, the details of which is in the diagram here. Every other detail is exactly as in ICCF numeric notation, except that there is no castling.

[edit] McCooey's hexagonal chess

Dave McCooey and Richard Honeycutt developed another variation of hexagonal chess.^[3] It is very similar to Glinski's version, but there are three differences: the starting array, the pawn's move and that stalemate is a draw, each player gets half a point. See the diagram on the left for the pawn's move in McCooey's variant. Note that the capturing move corresponds to the bishop's move. The white pawn on d5 can capture the black pawn on e8 en passant in case the black pawn advances to e6. The pawn on the f file is not allowed to advance two steps, and is not defended in the opening array. Which in fact allows a smothered mate when captured by a knight. But this rarely occurs in practical play.

These endgame studies apply to both Glinski's and McCooey's games^[4] :

• King & two knights can checkmate a lone king!
• King & rook beats king & knight (no fortress draws and a negligible number (0.0019%) of perpetual check draws).
• King & rook beats king & bishop (no fortress draws and no perpetual check draws).
• King & two bishops cannot checkmate a lone king, except for some very rare positions (0.17%).
• King, knight & bishop cannot checkmate a lone king, except for some very rare position (0.5%).
• King & queen does not beat king & rook: 4.3% of the positions are perpetual check draws, and 37.2% are fortress draws.
• King & rook can checkmate a lone king.

[edit] Shafran's hexagonal chess

Invented by Soviet geologist Isaak Grigorevich Shafran in 1939 and registered in 1956.It was demonstrated at the Worldwide Chess Exhibition in Leipzig in 1960.

The board is shaped like an irregular hexagon with nine files and ten ranks. There are 70 hexes in the board, as opposed to 91 in Glinski's and McCooey's versions. The files are labelled a to i; the straight lines running from 10 to 4 o'clock are numbered 1 to 10. In the diagram, the two kings start on e1 and e10; black's rook start on a6 and i10; white's rooks start on a1 and i5. The hex i1 doesn't exist! Each player calls the left-hand side of the board his queen's flank and the right-hand side his bishops' flank; note that they do not match (white's queen's flank is black's bishops').

The pieces and pawns move and capture exactly like McCooey's. However, a pawn's first move can take him to the middle of his file. This means that the a and i pawns advance only one step, and the d, e and f pawns may make a triple move. If they do they are subject to be captured en passant.

On the diagram of the left, the black pawn d8 has three possible moves, but none is safe; after 1..d7 it can be captured 2.exd7; after 1..d6 it can be captured 2.exd7 e.p. or 2.cxd7; after 1..d5 it can be captured en passant by both pawns.

Castling is possible in Shafran's chess. The usual restrictions apply. It can be long or short in either direction. The notation consists of Q- or B- (indicating whether the queen's or the bishops' rook is used) followed by 0-0-0 (long castling: the king moves next to the rook and the rook jumps over him) or 0-0 (short castling, the opposite procedure). In the diagram, the black king on h10 has castled long queenside (1..Q-0-0-0) and the one on c8 has castled short bishopside (1..B-0-0). Castling does not really increase the King's safety or make the Rook more active, but it is present in the game nonetheless, for completeness.

Finally, stalemate is a draw.

[edit] Other hexagonal chess variants

The first published hexagonal chess variant was a commercial game Hexagonia.^[1] It was invented in 1864 by John Jacques & Son. The board had 125 cells, each side had the king, 2 cannons, 4 knights and 8 pawns.

In 1984 Ronald Planesi invented ImmortalStarMasters game. It is a chess or checkers variant for two to six players played on a hexagonal board^[5]. The original name of this game was Kingmaster, however due to copyright issues it was renamed later. The board in this game is significantly larger then in Glinski hexagonal chess and placed in a such a way, that a side of a hexagon occupied by one of six players. All pieces except pawn move in the same way as in Glinski hexagonal chess. The pawn moves and captures similar to McCooey's chess, but it can move in two forward directions and capture in three direction (one forward and two diagonally-forward directions), due to different board orientation. In the central area pawns can move and capture in any direction.

[edit] See also

• Sannin shogi, a three-person shogi (Japanese chess) variant also played on a hexagonal board.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Gliński's Hexagonal Chess by Hans L. Bodlaender.
• Hexagonal Chess by I G Shafran by Ivan A Derzhanski.
• Hexagonal chess (in Russian) - a lot of information about Gliński's hexagonal chess, including rules, openings theory and problems.
• Rules The Russian page translated to English via Alta Vista.
• Scatha, a free GUI and engine for Mac OS which plays Glinski's Hexagonal Chess